People and Purpose: The Good Life

Here at school, every so often– when the weather is just nice enough– it seems like the right time to ask an existential question: what’s the point of all this?

It must be spring time.

Schools like ours love to dig into big questions about Mission and Identity. Who are we? What do we value? and What sets us apart?

Beneath some school’s verbose Mission statements and punchy belief statements, deeper than their platitudes and clichés, lies their vision of The Good Life. What does it mean to live well? How do we prepare our children to do so?

You will not be surprised that Evergreen believes the Good Life requires core academic skills: reading, calculating, problem solving, analysis, inference and synthesis.

But more, the Good Life is filled with loving relationships with the people who surround us and endow our lives with meaning. The Good Life is about people and purpose. What can we do today to make it likely that our children will become compassionate husbands and wives, moms and dads, neighbors and friends?

For us, cooperation-based, multi-aged Montessori classrooms are the best place to develop self-assured and self-actualized young people. With our emphasis on developing confidence and competence, children view themselves as capable of doing hard, meaningful things. They become secure with their identity in a stress-free, supportive classroom community rather than a socially competitive one.

To lead the Good Life, according to the Evergreen formula, one must have unquenchable curiosity, an appreciation of beauty, a sense of duty to others, engagement with the world we live in and a vision for a better one. It starts with knowing and loving ourselves.